the white hat

She had soft curls. I wanted to touch her, but her two nosy sisters were nearby, and I know it embarrassed her; she blushed easy in her paleness. So, I strummed her chestnut hair with my fingers in fleeting moments when we were alone alas. She said don't, but the giggle said yes.
The white winter hat fell to the frozen pond when I had my hand around her small waist with her small hot hand in mine as we waltzed on ice. The chastising sisters called her name angrily when they spotted us from their perch on shore, and it echoed throughout the brilliant white misty landscape like timber cracking and snapping limbs overburdened from an ice storm - that sound of pure death a fallen tree makes in the forest when no one is around.
I never believed her name was meant to sound as such. It was more suited for the gentle flow of clear water caressing pebbles in a shallow spring brook. We stood still listening as the echo faded. She was breathing heavily, her cheeks flushed, we smiled. I placed the hat, or I should say, positioned the hat carefully, tilted slightly north by northwest, her face forever kept from shadow, and when I looked at her again she was crying. She placed her small warm hands on my face, bending me down to a welcomed first kiss.